A reliable, congestion-control led multicast transport protocol in multimedia multi-hop networks

We consider the challenges of achieving reliable multicast in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). MANET environments can experience high packet loss rates because of node mobility and wireless signal interference. In addition, they are extremely sensitive to the network load due to the broadcast nature of the shared wireless medium. Thus, in designing a reliable multicast transport protocol, two components are essential- reliability and congestion control. We describe and evaluate the performance of the reliable adaptive lightweight multicast (RALM) protocol. We show through simulation that when subject to a wide range of network conditions (e.g., traffic load, number of multicast sources, and mobility), RALM achieves reliability, while exhibiting low end-to-end delay and minimal control overhead compared against those of UDP and SRM.